A given set of electronic equipment configured to provide desired system functionality is often installed in a chassis. Such equipment can include, for example, various arrangements of storage devices, memory modules, processors, circuit boards, interface cards and power supplies used to implement at least a portion of a storage system, a multi-blade server system or other type of information processing system.
The chassis typically complies with established standards of height, width and depth to facilitate mounting of the chassis in an equipment cabinet or other type of equipment rack. For example, standard chassis heights such as 1U, 2U, 3U, 4U and so on are commonly used, where U denotes a unit height of 1.75 inches (1.75″) in accordance with the well-known EIA-310-D industry standard.
It is also common for a given chassis to include multiple internal cooling modules, such as fans or blower assemblies, particularly for certain chassis heights. For example, a typical 4U chassis will often include multiple fans arranged in the vicinity of a midplane of the chassis. Such an arrangement is problematic in that it requires top access to the chassis in order to service the fans, which can be highly susceptible to failure. Also, it may be necessary to provide cable management arms in order to facilitate removal of the fans from the midplane location of the chassis. Moreover, midplane placement of the fans can lead to additional chassis complexities, such as a requirement for inclusion of specialized midplane vent holes adjacent to storage devices in that area.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved chassis configuration, particularly with regard to placement of modules such as cooling modules and dual in-line memory modules relative to storage devices.